The album was recorded in New York at Avatar Studios and produced once again by Angelo Petraglia and Jacquire King. Come Around Sundown is the follow-up to the hugely successful Only By The Night, which sold over six million copies worldwide and garnered four Grammy Awards. It’s yet another bold and expansive statement by the Nashville, Tennessee-based quartet who, in the last two years, have become one of the biggest bands in the world; also one of the most creatively restless.

For a taste of what to expect from the new album be sure to check out the first single, Radioactive.

It’s a special promotion that the label has chosen to do outside of the UK which is why we haven’t blogged about it in the UK. We do many similar promotion that are only in the UK. It will be available on release date for everyone.

Idiotic record industry still doesn’t get it! Increasing demand while limiting supply only fuels piracy. Why can’t they see this? In a connected world, the only way forward is global releases and global licenses. Any restriction of supply by region or any other metric will only result in more piracy, and any increases in prosecutions for piracy will only result in encrypted piracy that they can’t see.

Listen up record industry, you can’t win. Give customers what they want and they will pay for it. Mess them around and they will pirate. Please get that into your thick skulls!

When Spotify started up two years ago I was optimistic that things might change, but two years later and absolutely nothing has changed. Lots of material that could be earning the record labels and artists money is still not available on Spotify due to stupid licensing rules. Material is still being removed from Spotify (who does that help?), and regional restrictions are still here. The record industry has had more than 10 years since they killed Napster in order to evolve into something fit for the digital age, but they still haven’t managed to do it yet! You could have nipped piracy in the bud if you had only given customers what they wanted, now you are in danger of killing your own industry due to lack of ability to evolve in a changing world.

We value Spotify’s Premium users and their commitment to music and aim to give them an enhanced music experience that Free users do not get. We execute pre-listenings like this all the time and the scope of them varies. Pre-listening decisions are not taken lightly and we try to balance a range of interests and seek the best outcome. This time we couldn’t find a way to make it work, but maybe next time one of our albums will be made available a week in advance in all markets. Maybe we will run a competition that only Premium users can participate in. My point is: The experiences we can give to Premium users vary.

It is essential to remember that record labels often have global rights. There are exceptions when an artist and their representatives want to tailor a team for each market or region. Some artists may express a wish to not have their music in certain environments. We have an obligation take their concerns under consideration and respect the contracts we sign, so there could be many reasons why you can’t find the song you were looking for.

Sony Music obviously want our customers on Spotify to share and recommend playlists/songs on Facebook and Twitter and in an absolute majority of cases this is a smooth user experience. With that said, we still have some work to do, but rest assured that we are working on it.

@samuelarvidsson – Thanks for replying. I have nothing at all against you providing premium users with “an enhanced music experience”, they are after all paying (I am a premium user myself). That is not the problem. My point is that it’s hard to see how anyone gains from not providing that enhanced music experience to all premium users equally instead of discriminating purely because of where they live. A factor which is irrelevant to a paying customer with an internet connection.

My second point, which you fail to address, is the amount of back catalogue you are still holding onto, which could be earning you and the artists money, but is just sitting in an archive somewhere instead of being available on Spotify.

Lastly why do you still insist on removing content that has previously been available on Spotify? I know all the arguments about changing ownership of publishing rights etc. but that’s your problem in the record industry to solve. Customers do not care who owns the publishing rights and they don’t care if they are changing hands. Isn’t it in everyone’s interests, customers, artists, labels and publishers alike, that content is available and earns money? All you do is shoot yourselves in the foot, and once again drive people towards piracy, if you take away something that was previously available.

@samuelarvidsson – Thanks, by the way, for actually engaging with your customers, this is so often not the case. If I recall correctly, you and I have had these discussions before both here on the blog and in the support forum. Like I said, two years since the launch of Spotify and unfortunately not much has changed.

I don’t share the view that “nothing has happened” over the last years and to claim that things are not improving can’t possibly be the case. I know this because half a year ago, Spotify Social wasn’t available for consumers to connect to their friends via Facebook and Twitter. 18 months ago you couldn’t use Spotify on a mobile phone. Two years ago, Spotify was not around at all. A decade ago MySpace, YouTube, Vevo, Facebook and Itunes weren’t there for you to connect with artists.

To sweepingly suggest that labels fail to make content available globally is to take a simplistic view. There are thousands of labels out there and we are one of them. Most of the times content are not made available because of contractual limitations. Sometimes, in the case of promotional activities (not talking about this Kings of Leons pre-listening in particular, but in general), we go with the partner that offer us the best deal. In some cases artists ask that their their music is only available on CDs and vinyl. Some of them want their music only to be available on ITunes. There is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to why content are not made globally available.

@samuelarvidsson – All the innovations you list are technical innovations from Spotify and absolutely nothing to do with the record labels or the music industry.

I stand by my original statement and say that in the past two years almost nothing has changed with regards to the record industry realising that they cannot continue in their current vein and must fundamentally change the way they do business to suit the internet and the digital age. If there had been any great breakthroughs then I would not still be complaining about back catalogue material not being available, content being removed and the continued use of regional restrictions on a medium that does not respect national boundaries.

@samuelarvidsson – Your comment that there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer is just short sighted and doomed to failure and just ignored the reality of the situation. Even if a artist stipulates that they only want to sell their records in one record store in their home town and no where else on the planet earth, then it still only requires one person to buy their record and, with the technology that exists today, this can then be copied to everyone everywhere who has an internet connection. Trying to ignore the reality of the situation won’t help you. The technology to make and distribute perfect copies at almost zero cost exists and cannot be un-invented. Your only option is to embrace and use the technology not fight against it. If an artist is being so foolish as to try and restrict their material to only one outlet or media type then I would suggest that they are receiving very very bad advice from their management and record label and really should think about getting better representatives to help them.